The Council of Europe in cooperation with the Supreme Court of Georgia organised a workshop on “Best Practices of Adjudication of Money Laundering and Other Economic Crime Cases”, in person in Tsinandali (Kakheti Region) on 6 and 7 October 2022.
The meeting was organised for all judges of the Chamber of Criminal Cases of the Supreme Court of Georgia. This is a follow-up meeting to the online workshop held on a similar topic on June 30, 2021. Due to the relevance and importance of the issues at hand, this follow-up in-person meeting was requested by the members of the beneficiary institution, in order to allow for further exchanges and more in-depth discussions on practical questions related to the adjudication of economic crime and judicial aspects of asset recovery. Two international Council of Europe experts, themselves practitioner judges dealing with money laundering and other economic crime cases as well as confiscation of proceeds from crime, participated in the meeting, bringing insights from their practice in their respective countries and at international level.
The Supreme Court judges seized the opportunity of this exclusive event to discuss trends and challenges generally faced by judges, in Georgia and internationally, when dealing with money laundering and other economic crime cases. The analysis of these challenges was based on a review of the concept of financial investigation and its use in the fight against economic crime; considerations related to the standard of proof and evaluation of evidence; the importance of international cooperation with focus on law enforcement as well as methods of ensuring the effective mechanism of confiscation of proceeds from crime.
The discussion and practical cases examined led to finding relevant solutions to address legal and practical issues identified by the Georgian Supreme Court judges in their professional activity in the area of economic crime. The event was considered highly relevant and useful by its participants, who requested to continue the exercise through follow-up editions of similar thematic workshops, to provide further reflection and practical guidance on how to deal with economic crimes and asset recovery from a judicial perspective.
This workshop is part of a series of activities designed to support the national authorities to improve frameworks and operational capacities for investigation, prosecution and adjudication of corruption, money laundering/financing of terrorism (ML/FT) and other economic crime cases.
This activity was organised in the framework of the project “Enhancing the Systems of Prevention and Combating Corruption, Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing in Georgia”, funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe and implemented by the Council of Europe in their Partnership for Good Governance II.
